The veritable freakshow that was Joann Fabrics Memorial Day Sale

or, why I am now shopping online for fabric and sewing supplies…

I needed two things: bias seam tape and buttons. That was it. I had already been to the fabric store on Saturday for some thread, and on Thursday prior for some fabric and twill tape. I don’t like making multiple trips and I would have waited for another day to get this stuff, but it was Monday and Andy and I had gone out to get some flowers for the yard and the weather was nice and we weren’t itching to go back home so I suggested we swing by JoANN Fabrics so I could grab what I needed to finish my latest creation.

Big mistake.

There was this woman in there at the fabric cutting counter whining about how she apparently was in earlier in the week and didn’t buy enough fabric. Well, actually, it was more like this:

Lady: I was in here on Friday, I bought some fabric. I need more. Where is it?

JoANN Fabric Cutter: What kind of fabric was it?

Lady: I’m not sure…

Yeah, she came back to buy more but neglected to bring in a swatch and apparently did not know what it was, where she found it, or anything else that might be helpful. This reminded me of the summer I worked in a bookstore in the mall. People would come it and ask “Do you have this book, it has a green cover, I saw it on Oprah? I don’t know the title or the author.” Or the subject, for that matter.

Let’s see. Green cover. As seen on Oprah. Umm…no. No, we don’t have that. (Eventually we got a shelf placard that said “As Seen On Oprah”, and it was one employee’s job to watch Oprah every day to see if there was a book mentioned and then place that book on the shelf. This was in the days before the internet, so the process was somewhat elaborate and complicated. Lucky for me I was not that employee).

But I digress….

Back at JoANNs, the woman was lamenting how the pattern instructed that she needed 2.5 yards of fabric, and that she bought 2.5 yards, but she ended up over a yard short. She had no idea what went wrong and was now stuck in trying to get the additional yardage that she needed. She did not bring the pattern with her, so no one was able to determine exactly how much extra yardage would be required to save the project.

It was really obvious to me what went wrong. Somebody apparently couldn’t read or couldn’t do math (or both). My guess is she either bought the yardage for a smaller size listed, then cut a larger size and found it did not fit, or she bought the yardage listed for a 60″ wide bolt and neglected to notice that the bolt of fabric that she selected was only 45″ wide.

I got to listen to this exchange (hence my deductive reasoning as to how she ended up in this predicament) while I was searching in vain for extra wide single fold olive green bias tape. They had none. I had to choose between extra wide double fold in green or extra wide single fold in black.

I made my way to the front of the store. Now, for the Memorial Day sale, the store was really quiet. Other than the not-enough-fabric lady and myself, there were only two other customers in the store. I was second in line. The woman in front of me was about 40-ish with a preteen daughter. They were buying an assortment of items, among them a selection of quilting square/fat quarters, some notions, and a cut of expensive linen. The woman also had her JoANNs coupons ® in hand.

If you don’t shop at JoANN, then you need the background on the Coupons. They send them to you in an email. They are also available in the store flyers at the front of the store. There are always two available each week. One is for 10% off your entire purchase; one is for 40% off one regularly priced singular item. It very specifically states on the coupons that the 40% off cannot be applied to already marked down/sale merchandise. One cut of by the bolt product counts as one singular item. It’s pretty clear to me.

As it happened, the Memorial Day sale had quite a few items already on sale. Often times certain items are excluded. That’s, like, normal in any corporate run retail establishment.

The woman in front of me was watching tge register LCD like a hawk. When she saw that one item in her basket did not ring in at a sale price of 50% off, she flew off the handle and demanded that it be taken off. The sales girl (probably 18 years old) quietly walked to the display carrying said item to do a price check. She returned, stating that the 50% off sale excluded one type of fabric, and that among the items the woman was purchasing, there was one selection that was not on sale. The woman did not look pleased. The girl explained  “It’s not a big deal, you got all the other fat quarters on sale and this one is the only one, with your coupon it will take care of things.” The girl then rang in the remainder of the items.

The woman looked at the screen and demanded to know what the 5% sales tax was for.

“What the hell is that? We’re not in Florida…”

The sales girl explained that Massachusetts has a 5% sales tax. And if memory serves me correctly, they always have.

The woman seemed quite surprised to learn that she was in Massachusetts. Now, granted, the Tyngsboro JoANN store is about a quarter of a mile from the NH border, and if you simply cross the street and turn left into the Pheasant Lane Mall parking lot you are indeed in both states depending on which bay you park in, but I mean, it’s not a secret.

So as you can imagine, that did not go over well.

Upon ringing up all the items the woman then wanted to apply her coupons. Both of them. At the same time. On all sale items.

I’m thinking “this is not going to end well.”

The sales girl asked which one she wanted to use, and the woman was perplexed. Upon learning that she could not use both on the same purchase, she decided to split her purchase into two and have her 12 year old daughter “buy” the other one so that they could use both coupons. And she also decided that she wanted to use the 40% off coupon on the 5+ yards of linen that she was buying.

The girl then explained that she couldn’t do the 40% off on the entire cut. Apparently the woman had bought the end of bolt, which is always discounted 50%. The woman explained that she wanted 6 yards of linen but there was only 5 and a bit left, so they charged her 50% off on the cut since it was an end of bolt cut. The woman wanted to know why she couldn’t get the 40% off the cut of fabric.

“Well,” explained the girl, “You already got 50% off because it was end of bolt. I could move it back to full price and then apply the coupon, but you are saving more this way.”

The woman then went off on a tirade about how she didn’t want anything and that she wanted 6 yards of fabric and not 5 and a bit and that this store was apparently trying to rip her off with all the various sales and fine print and that “Never mind, I don’t want ANY OF THIS, I’ll just got to the Hooksett store and get it all there, THEY will be cheaper.”

Now, I had been patiently standing in line behind this whole fiasco, waiting with my $5 in hand to buy my two packs of bias tape and some buttons. There was another woman patiently waiting behind me. It was a beautiful sunny Memorial day and I just wanted to get home and finish a blouse that I was working on and get ready to have a friend over for dinner. I didn’t need this.

So, I opened my mouth.

“You know, ” I said rather loudly to no one in particular, “The Hooksett store is about 45 miles away. And you have to drive through two toll booths to get there. And it’s $1 a toll at each booth. And the tolls are both ways.  If you factor in the $4 in tolls plus probably another $7.25 in gas (at $2.20 a gallon, let’s assume she gets 27 miles per gallon), it’s going to cost at least $11 to go shop at the Hooksett store…and if you don’t go today, chances are the sale will be over and the coupons void.”
I didn’t bother to tell her about the Nashua, NH store located approximately 10 miles away.

Making friends, everywhere I go.